A Miner's Lunch

as i type i am "experiencing" for the first time (not sure yet how much i am "enjoying") a beef pasty bought at our local grocery store, baked in anaconda. we have been seeing signs and menus serving these intriguing rolled-up-and-baked little meals all over the state. usually a pasty is comprised of potatoes, beef, or pork-literally created for your western "meat and potatoes" kinda guy. so when i saw one at the store this morning (starving), i grabbed one with excitement. i am ALWAYS up for challenging my definitions of good food. we have been told that these meals originated with mining, therefor it makes sense that they would be popular in the region of anaconda where this little culinary treasure was created. (side note: the anaconda/butte area actually had a vibrant copper industry into the seventies, and you can still meet burly men here that once worked the copper mines.) the pasty was created for these miners. i can just picture them sitting there quietly covered in dust, unwrapping their pasty from a cloth handkerchief that they had kept close by all morning. i can picture the crust falling from their lips, getting caught in their beards. i am sure it smelled like home for them, and lunch was not a mid-day break to read a paper and catch up on current events, but the smell (thoughts of their wives and mothers) actually helped them survive the back-breaking, lung-deteriorating labor of mining, work that my generation can not even imagine.

i have decided that the best way i can describe the pasty is by calling on old flavors of my childhood. each bite reminds me of my grandmother, although she had never travelled this far west. this makes me think that it is more a generational dish rather than an isolated and authentic meal for this geographical region. the inside is stuffed (i mean, STUFFED) with beef and onions which tastes just like my nana's goulash. i have never made anything with this type of beef, i can't even recognize it other than the flavor. it is almost balled up, and hard to cut through. i am sure it tastes the same both on my grandmothers table and in this pasty because it is, most likely, some leftover cut of the cow. remember what all that generation could and did do with cheap meat? they even canned it! i could never locate the potatoes which were listed second on the packaging. and saving the best flavor for last, the outside of the pasty is absolutely heavenly. i have actually picked around the entire pasty, leaving a heaping mound of beef and onions. imagine the most buttery and delicate pie crust, the thickness of that used to cover a chicken pot pie (my nana's version of this all-in-one meal). the crust was the best i have ever tasted anywhere, including the southern pie country!

i don't think i will be eating anymore pasties while i am out here, that is unless there is a vegetarian version hiding somewhere in a small cafe ran by hippies proud of their heritage, but even more concerned with health. and speaking of health, the only people who could eat this everyday, would be miners who worked 12 hour days of physically intense labor.